Hi Forum
I finally had a moment to try my magnet on some dbx. Since the new addition in the primer (reverse dart thrower) I’ve tried to incorporate that form as my base.
One clip is part of a song, the other clip is an arpeggio.
Are the clips ok? This is my first time using the magnet.
It’s hard to tell because the speed is pretty far below what you’d need for DBX/crosspicking. It looks pretty flat to me and not ‘bouncy’, but the true test is to see if this works at 16ths @ 120 as a starting point.
Troy has told me that even 140 bpm is too slow. I just know personally I cannot sustain string hopping at 120, so I knew I found a decent motion when I could play long-ish phrases at that speed. Once I got comfortable, yes, that same motion is capable of speeds above 140. Also, anecdotal, I found out that I was using a few different motions of DBX and I instantly got a boost by using the Morse 3-finger grip. In terms of how I executed the motion, it didn’t really feel any different to me, but the comfort, speed and endurance all went up so I knew right away that whatever I was doing before was less efficient.
And this could very well have been Troy’s intent telling me I should be aiming for the higher speed. The correct motion should be capable of some pretty fast playing. It’s not a matter of working up to it, it’s about finding the correct motion, and that should be fast from the beginning.
Ok, I guess I’ll have to floor it then 
May i ask what you played to test your motion? Did you do 1 note per string arpeggios or mixed notes per string? Did you do tremolo one on string?
I will try the 3 finger grip, just for fun. Do you still use that or did you learn the motions you needed and then returned to your original grip?
Sure, I did a sustained arpeggios like what you’re doing. I figured keeping my left hand ‘fixed’ would simplify things. I didn’t do any tremolo just because I couldn’t see how I could be sure it was escaping in both directions. Troy has mentioned numerous times that we should be playing scalar patterns too as we’re trying to learn the DBX motions. I have worked on that but admittedly I did not do this from the beginning. I should have, and if I had one thing to do over again during my DBX quest it would have been more of the scalar stuff.
Though to be clear, the only reason I wanted to do DBX at all is because I wanted to be able to play the lush arpeggios, I’m already pretty happy with my single note scalar playing and anything that doesn’t conform to single escape I can manage with either swiping or displacement. That’s probably why I prioritized the 1nps stuff on my DBX quest. But again, Troy’s advice is always solid. Doing scalar patterns helps with the 1nps.
I tried to catalog my journey here (still ongoing), if you’re interested.
What speed is fast enough? I still haven’t got a DBX motion down!
Here’s where we’d discussed it, you may need to read a little before that just for full context.
The part in particular where I got ‘140 is too slow’ is here.
And it’s possible I’m reading that incorrectly. Maybe that doesn’t mean “140 is too slow”. Maybe the inability to go ‘faster’ than 140 is too slow. I think in general we should be suspicious of things that have a low speed cap and I’m certain we can’t find the motion by playing well below 100bpm. When I found it, I purposely started in the 120 - 130 range. It only took about a week of me messing around, no prior DBX experience/quests. A motion someone spends months on and still can’t do at or above those speeds is not the right motion.
Sorry, I missed this question. Yeah, currently I’m going all in with the Morse setup. It had such an instant speed boost when I tried it, that it was a no-brainer.
I don’t mean to drag this thread too far off topic, but what do you mean here by “displacement”?
I hadn’t heard of this until recently. Another brilliant Troy discovery. This probably isn’t a proper description, but I think of it as the ‘opposite’ of swiping. I made a post about it here, near the bottom with a clear screenshot of tab
Whoa. That’s the sneakiest guitar cheat I think I’ve ever seen.
@Danish I second Joe’s suggestion to “floor it” to see what this motion is really capable of.
At the current speed, you won’t really be able to tell whether the motion is viable (pretty much any motion can work at this lower speed).
Additionally, the pickslant looks a little too “DWPS-y” to me (particularly in the 2nd video). Usually, great “crosspickers” have more of a neutral picklant. See if you can adjust the pick grip and/or arm position to achieve that.
Hi all, thanks for your responses and the links to other threads.
I definitely can’t do this cleanly at above 120 so it will be a video that will challenge my vanity 
Alone with the kids this weekend since wife is working but maybe I can get a chance to film something.
What really helped me find the motion was trying to do an ascending arpeggio, with the chord held down, as fast as I could. At first it was just a mess. But I think I tried just getting 2 notes really fast, then 3 and so on, then I worked on descending. It smoothed itself out, but I was able to do this in about a week’s time.
I will say I’d never previously experienced a motion or setup like the one I found, that worked. So I know I never would gotten there by going slow and building the speed up. We really have to think of it like learning a trick. It’s learning to do a movement we’ve never done. Tricky!
Your setup looks good, and I do agree with @tommo about finding a more neutral pickslant (i.e. no slant). I think if you do that and just try to play fast, you’ll stumble on the right motion.
So I’ve had a minor setback – or a discovery – depending on how you look at it.
Since trying to learn these new motions, I’ve started to feel some pain in the right (picking) arm shoulder. This has led my to try and see if I could provoke the discomfort – if I could do motions that would make it more uncomfortable! And then, of course, try to avoid doing that!
I’ve found something, that couldn’t be seen from a magnet point of view. The error on my part, comes from trying to rest the side of the hand on the bridge – and trying real hard to have the side of the hand as straight as the bridge. This lead to the wrist being in a state of extension, while trying to perform the motions neccecary to picking the notes.
Doing wrist extension away from the guitar gives the same kind of pain in the shoulder region as when I try to maintain that position on the bridge of the guitar.
A more relaxed position gives the side of the hand a more oblique line in relation to the brigde and no more pain from extending the wrist.
I don’t have a picture of it here, but when the hand goes towards the strings with a pick, it places the pick where the middle pickup is on a strat. The position in the first picture would position the pick between the bridge and the middle pickup.
Another issue I am investigating is radial deviation when doing upstrokes/going to a lower string. I suspect that I am not doing enough “motorcycle throttling” (I remember hearing this term in a crosspicking video – is it still a thing or is it passé?) with the wrist, instead trying to reach the lower string by doing more radial deviation – going passed the zone of comfort.
I am also going to try to experiment with a more supinated arm position, to see if that works better for me.
Finally, the downward pressure of the hand on the bridge to keep it in place. I don’t want the hand and/or the guitar to move around too much, so that I don’t have a sense of where the pick is in relation to the strings, but I think maybe I am putting too much pressure on the bridge. Pressing hard seem to activate pain/irritation in the shoulder region.
Just discovered this. Hadn’t seen it, answers some questions for me about going to the next string, keeping it here for reference.
Edit: The interesting bit is the flexing/extension of the wrist to reach all the strings from one position/point of contact with the bridge. This is also mentioned by Troy in the reverse 
section of the wrist primer.
Seems to me there must be some more supination going on as the pick goes towards the low E and less as it goes to the high E.
